EXH2026-029 - ethnographic attestation
Kilenge
Papua New Guinea - Cape Gloucester, far-west New Britain - Oceania - Bismarck Archipelago
Restricted
nausan German
Source term: nausan-Schwirrholz
nausan: the Kilenge bullroarer, belonging to the men's nausung masked-spirit cult, kept from women and the uninitiated.
Etymology. Laufer records nausan as the Kilenge name of the bullroarer without glossing it; the form corresponds to nausung (nausang), the masked spirits of the Kilenge men's initiation cult, whose ceremonies used the bullroarer to keep women and children away. If that identification is right, the instrument bears the mask-spirits' name. (medium confidence)
The Kilenge of Cape Gloucester, on the far-western tip of New Britain, traced the bullroarer back to women. The missionary-ethnographer Carl Laufer recorded their account: women of the nearby Siassi Islands, with whom the Kilenge traded, invented the first one out gathering firewood, when a splinter went whirring through the air. The men then killed the inventors and made the instrument their own. The same firewood-origin story runs along the Huon Gulf and the Bismarck coast. The Tami tell of a woman who finds a swinging chip of wood with a string attached and brings it home; the men agree to put a spell on her so that she dies, and the instrument becomes their secret. The Busama tell it more bluntly still: a husband spears his wife to death so the bullroarer will stay a male monopoly, and the women are told she was eaten by an ogre. Laufer worked among the Baining at the other end of the island, who blew bamboo trumpets alongside the bullroarer in their masked dances, in his words, to scare the women.
so erfanden die Frauen das erste Schwirrholz... Sie wurden später von den Männern getötet, die das Schwirrholz für sich übernahmen.
so the women invented the first bullroarer... They were later killed by the men, who took the bullroarer for themselves.
Laufer, "Rigenmucha, das höchste Wesen der Baining," Anthropos 41–44 (1946/49), fn. 39
- Object
- Bullroarer (nausan).
- Function
- Origin myth from informant Lavatu: women of the Siassi Islands invented the first bullroarer (a splinter whirring through the air while fetching firewood) and frightened the men with it; the men then killed them and kept it (Laufer). Practice attestation via Friederici: in the aulu or bokumu cylindrical-mask dance of the Barriai and Kilenge, only the initiated may watch; others are warned off by the bullroarer, and a new member pays one pig to see the bullroarer, a second for admission to the dance (Rivers 1914).
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Kilenge villages, Cape Gloucester
- Source location
- Anthropos 41-44 (1946/49), p. 521, fn. 39
- Initiation rite
- Women-linked
- Female-origin myth